Subj : Re: Borland C++ 3.1 - an oldy... still a goodie?
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : Nathaniel L. Walker
Date : Sun Jan 09 2005 01:41 pm

It's probably an old version (maybe 5.1?).  I'd probably ditch it for TASM,
which is much better (IMO).  If you have an old legacy machine running DOS/
Windows 3.1x or can run it in a VMWare virtual machine, you should be able
to learn quite a bit using BC++ 3.1.  I'm still mad there aren't any good
DOS
IDEs anymore :p

I really didn't like the documentation that came with earlier Borland/Turbo
C++
releases.  I felt it was too technical to actually learn from it, but when I
bought the
Turbo C++ Suite and read the [PDF] books for TC++ 4.5, they seemed a bit
better.  Borland always made me cringe with their vague documentation of the
ObjectWindows Library, though (the docs always lagged behind OWL itself).
Turbo Vision was never documented extensively in it's C++ manifestation
(the Pascal version was, though).

BTW, there are patches you need to apply for BC++ 3.1, and you should do
them.  It's for things like the Linker and a patch for when you override
operator
new (like if you use Turbo Vision).  A quick search should bring them up I'd
list but I haven't slept in 3 days and getting ready to do that.  Ciao!

Nathaniel L. Walker

"Todd" <promosMAPS@burchMAPSwoodusa.com> wrote in message
news:41e1464c$1@newsgroups.borland.com...
>
> "Nathaniel L. Walker" <nlw4563@louisiana.edu> wrote:
> >There is still alot of DOS development going on believe it or not, and if
> >you look good enuff, you may find a viable target (i.e. FreeDOS).
BC++3.1
> >is old, so it's standard compliance is not good, but it was a good
compiler,
> >and the last great DOS IDE.  Turbo Vision is nice, too :p  Forget about
> >Windows programming, it only supports up to Windows 3.1, and alot of
stuff
> >written for Win16 (esp low level stuff) won't even run on WinNT/2k/XP.
> >Check FreeDOS.org when you think you have a nice handle on C/C++, maybe
you
> >can contribute!
> >
> >VB3 is basically useless, MASM *can* be of some use if you do some low
level
> >programming, but you cannot link MASM objects to BC++ objects.  The only
> >thing really good about MASM was the IDE in the 6.0+ versions, TASM
lacked
> >one (pipe it from the C++ IDE).  BC++3.1 comes with TASM 3.2.
> >
> >Many of the tools that came with BC++3 will not work on WinXP.  The
16-bit
> >TProfW from BC++ 5.02 will not even work on WinXP.  BC++3.1's tools
> >repeatedly crashed my Win98SE VMWare, but if you can find a DOS out there
to
> >run it on it should be wonderful.
> >
> >The first thing I suggest you do is burn all those floppies to CD, they
> >probably won't last much longer now that you're actually gonna use them.
I
> >myself have a 20GB partition set aside to store all my legacy softwares I
> >don't want to lose, and of course there are the CDRs...
> >
> >Nathaniel L. Walker
>
>
> Nathaniel, thanks for taking the time to respond so thoroughly.
> I checked late last night, and still have all the books that came with 3.1
also,
> plus all the TASM doc too.  I think I'll write some command line programs,
to wet my feet again.
> I still have some DOS 6.0 and 6.2 boot disks too,
> plus, the IBM Dos 2.0 doc on how to write device drivers, etc...  Good
stuff.
>
> (Not sure what rel of MASM I have, but it's on 1 floppy.)
>
> Thanks again.  My first visit to this group, and probably won't be my
last.
>
> Todd

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